8 comments:

Submarginal. The word stays in the mind. It has an eerie sort of resonance (which I’m sure you intended) with our situation today on this beautiful dust-mote of a world, the only one we’ll ever have.

Words like resettlement administration signify a bureaucratic response: an institution arises to deal with a recurring crisis, one that becomes permanent or long term. Sheep grazing, of course, contributed to the desertification. Civilization presents us with a Gordian knot of a problem, anytime.

That child holding the puppies, and her gesture of brushing back her hair, looking out at us across time . . .

I love these old photographs. And where the water is, the people went. . . or so one would think.

Suzanne is now in the middle of the desert on the Somalia border--where it is 105 plus.She says the people who live there have always lived there, but there is no water, no reason to be there, at least not according to our logic. It's amazing to think of all the ways people live on this "beautiful dust-mote" and often in the dust.

When I first saw #4, I thought it was a young pregnant mother holding her first child, which--if it were the case--would make this photo even more poignant i.e., the statuesque young woman with child on the margin of the world expecting yet another.

Vassilis, I pondered Arthur Rothstein's caption on #4 at length, decided to over-rule him, and in an early draft titled the photo "Mother and child".

But I hate to change a photographer's caption when there's any room for doubt.

So I went back again through all the photos in this substantial file, and it struck me that, in the family of fourteen, this may be big sister with little sister. Big sister herself big with child?

Then again Rothstein may simply have mis-captioned. If so he should be forgiven that small mistake. He got so many other things right. This file is a permanent testament to the historical movement of a persistent and resilient people out onto the harsh territory of the high plains under extremely difficult circumstances. The trials and pains can only be imagined. The courage is evident.

The girl on the porch with the puppies is Lavina Margie Goss, now Rae. She and parents, G. Joseph and Rosaline Goss, were relocated to the Whiteson area, near McMinnville, Oregon. A number of their neighbors relocated there, too. She now lives in Keizer, Oregon.

The girl on the porch with the puppies is Lavina Margie Goss, now Rae. She and parents, G. Joseph and Rosaline Goss, were relocated to the Whiteson area, near McMinnville, Oregon. A number of their neighbors relocated there, too. She now lives in Keizer, Oregon. As she recalls those times, there was much family, community and joy. They did not think of themselves as being as bad off as they now appear.

Thanks for putting that on the record, Max. Your final comment puts a lot of things in perspective, now. People have all kinds of stuff now, but I don't know, looking around -- family, community and joy, maybe not so much